Have you ever felt the way King David did here? In these very difficult and challenging times, with every person on the planet grappling with grief, fear, anxiety, and uncertainty, have you cried out to God and received only silence in response?
We all feel that way sometimes—maybe a lot of times. And David shows us in the Psalms that it’s okay to cry out to God and ask Him why he has abandoned us, even as we know, deep down, that He hasn’t and never will. In my latest release, Driven, one of the main characters, Holden Kelly, struggles with what he calls “the long, loud silence of Heaven.”
After a tragic loss, he and his wife, Christina, are dealing with their grief differently. His instinct is to draw closer to her but hers is to pull away, and Holden feels as though they may never find their way back to each other. And he feels as though all of his prayers are hitting the ceiling and crashing down around him. This excerpt comes at a part of the story where Holden begins to see that he has been giving those feelings far too much weight:
Holden lay in the tent, arms crossed beneath his head as he stared at the small opening in the roof. Mikayla’s words echoed over and over in his mind. Even with everything he had gone through the past few years, he did understand that God hadn’t left him. That He was still good. Only in the rational part of his brain, though. All these months, he’d struggled to feel as if that was true.
If what Mikayla had said was right, then maybe it was time to stop putting all his stock into what his emotions were telling him, since those shifted every day—sometimes every minute—and start trusting what he knew in his head. He didn’t feel his prayers were getting through, but he knew God heard him. He didn’t feel that God was walking through this with him, but on some deep level he recognized that God hadn’t abandoned him. Holden wouldn’t have made it this far if He had. Not through his childhood, or Gage’s death, or the loss of his son, or this terrible place he was in with his wife.
He would have checked out a long time ago if God hadn’t been walking alongside him, supporting him when he was too weak to stand. Like gravity, he couldn’t see it, but he was deeply aware that God’s power was real and that its invisible force acted upon him every second of every day, keeping him from being flung off into a vast nothingness.
During a time when our feelings can threaten to overwhelm us, it is so important to put our trust in what we know to be true about God. He is still sovereign and on his throne; He is still good; He has never and will never leave us or forsake us. Those are promises from the Word of God, and He cannot fail to keep His promises or He will no longer be God. When our feelings crash over us like the waves over the small fishing boat the disciples and Jesus were in that night, we can trust the words of the hymn written by Katharina A. von Schlegel in 1752, “Be still, my soul, the waves and winds still know His voice Who ruled them while He dwelt below.”
And whatever our capricious emotions might try to tell us, we can put all our stock in the truth below, as David did.
Sara Davison is the author of three romantic suspense series—The Seven Trilogy, The Night Guardians, and The Rose Tattoo Trilogy. She has been a finalist for ten national writing awards, including Best New Canadian Christian author, a Carol, a Selah, and two Daphne du Maurier Awards for Excellence in Mystery/Suspense. She is a Word and Cascade Award winner. She currently resides in Ontario, Canada with her husband Michael and their three children. The words on the mug she uses every morning pretty much sum up her life—I just want to sleep, drink coffee, and make stuff up. Get to know Sara better at www.saradavison.org and @sarajdavison.
Children aren’t the only ones who can disappear…
Driven by ongoing grief and relentless dreams, Holden Kelly is determined to track down the child his brother Gage abducted eight years earlier. The rescue that might have saved Matthew Gibson’s life had cost Gage his. Proving his brother hadn’t sacrificed his life for nothing might be the only way Holden can start fully living his again. And it could be the last chance he has to find his way back to the wife he loves but who is also mired in grief and a crisis of faith.
Mikayla Grant has nightmares of her own. A road trip with private investigator Jax Rodriguez—a man she is strongly drawn to even though his primary goal seems to be to drive her crazy—can’t be the way to heal from a terrible loss. Can it?
As Holden, Mikayla, and Jax follow the missing child’s trail from Toronto to Chicago, their mission is not as secret as they thought. Someone knows they are coming and will stop at nothing to prevent them from finding the child Gage rescued.
And to make sure that no one ever hears from the three of them again.
